


On Softer Shores

by woodenducks



Category: A Way Out (Video Game)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Fix-It, Frottage, I mean come on, Idiots in Love, Light Angst, M/M, Mexico, Non-Penetrative Sex, Oral Sex, Sharing a Bed, Slow Burn, spoilers for the end of the game (obviously), they really should be married
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-08
Updated: 2020-07-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:22:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25145383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/woodenducks/pseuds/woodenducks
Summary: Leo’s skin tans with the sun. Vincent learns to make proper chilaquiles for breakfast, with eggs from a couple of hens he doesn’t really remember them getting. They pick avocados and make guacamole with too much lime juice. Vincent’s shoulders break out in freckles from spending so much time outside, and Leo makes fun of him, endlessly, gently.Or: Vincent and Leo take a leap of faith, and build their lives anew.
Relationships: Leo Caruso/Vincent Moretti
Comments: 19
Kudos: 92





	On Softer Shores

It’s over. 

Harvey’s body is lying floating in a pool. His goons are wasting their ammo, firing at the getaway plane. And he and Leo are flying steadily northwest, away from Harvey’s estate on the Guatemalan border, in Emily’s skilled hands as she pilots them back towards California. 

By the time they’ve been in the air for two hours, remorse starts to set in. A slow, deep rumble of guilt takes hold of Vincent’s gut, twisting it, threatening to rush up his gullet and out of his mouth in a torrent of bitter bile. What he’d give not to have to cross the border back into the States. What he’d give to not have this end the way he knows it’s going to.

Vincent looks at Leo across the cargo hold. Leo smiles at him. 

“We did it,” he says. He sounds happy, but tired. His face is exhausted, hair sweat-matted and eyes half-closed. The dull roar of the propeller is a soporific drone, and Vincent can feel the tension start to leach out of his muscles despite the turmoil brewing in his stomach. 

“Yeah,” he says. “We did it.” 

Leo reaches a foot across the cargo hold, nudges Vincent’s boot with his own. 

“So what’s next?” he asks.

 _Next_ , Vincent thinks. _Next is when I blow it all to hell_.

It’s been gnawing away at him since they first got on this plane and put the last leg of their plan into action. Back in California, there’s a whole team of cops at the airfield waiting for them. Waiting for Leo, fugitive at large. And him, the UC in shining armor dropping off the package. 

Leo. Fuck, Leo doesn’t deserve this. Leo, who blindly followed Vincent’s lead, who befriended him and trusted him and helped him get his revenge on Harvey all without a second’s hesitation. 

He needs to find a way out of this. 

Leo’s looking at him with pride, pleased with their job well done. Trust is practically shining out of his goddamn eyes. 

Vincent can’t do this to him. It’s meant too much: their escape, their flight from the law. Every time they grasped hands to pull each other out of the shit was another nail in his coffin. 

He looks at Leo, at the face that’s become more familiar to him over the last month than even his own. He knows every tick of Leo’s eyebrows, every curve of his mouth. It’s a familiarity forged in fire, and he’s not ready to let it go. 

“I need to tell you something,” he says.

“Yeah?” Leo looks nervous suddenly, and he hates that he put that there. 

“I’m not…” He hesitates, struggling to find the words. 

Leo draws his foot back and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “What is it, buddy?” 

Vincent swallows, bites the bullet. “I’m not who you think I am,” he says. 

Leo’s jaw tightens. “What do you mean?” he asks, eye narrowing.

Vincent sighs. He feels the tightrope he’s been walking slacken as he opens his mouth to let the truth out.

“I’m a fucking cop,” he mutters. 

“Huh?” Leo looks like he doesn’t understand the words.

“I’m undercover.” It hurts him to say it. To see the pain that shoots into Leo’s eyes.

“What the fuck do you mean?” Leo spits, rearing back in his seat.

“I mean I’m on a job. To get Harvey,” he says. 

“And you used me?” Leo’s eyes blaze with anger.

“I…” Vincent flounders. “At first, yes. But not any more, I swear. I needed to see this through, needed you to help me get there, but now I don’t want to lie to you any more. I can’t, Leo, I can’t lie to you again.”

Leo is speechless. For the first time since Vincent met him, he’s not running his goddamn mouth, and Vincent hates it. 

“Say someth—“ he starts, before Leo cuts him off.

“I thought you were my friend,” he says, and it’s the one sentence that could have suckerpunched him the hardest. 

“I am, Leo,” he says, in a low and urgent voice. “God, I am your friend. I’m so fucking sorry. It was a job, you were a case.” He feels wretched. “I feel like a piece of shit, Leo, I do.”

Leo is tense, and holds himself like he’s expecting a blow. He licks his lips, nods to himself. 

“And so what’s waiting for me in California?” he asks. “Another fucking jail cell?” 

Vincent hates the resignation in Leo’s voice, the way his shoulders droop. He thinks of the additional time Leo will be serving after the havoc they’ve wreaked together. He’ll never get out from behind bars. While Vincent…does what exactly? Goes back to the grind at the Bureau, drinks alone in his one-bedroom apartment, goes to bed each night lonely only to wake up lonelier? 

“No,” he says. He gestures to Leo to keep his voice down, aware that they’re not alone in the plane. “No, I’m gonna get us out of here.” 

His eyes flick to Emily up in the cockpit, sees her laser focus on the skies ahead. Heavy headphones covering her ears keep her tuned in to the VHF radio, where their captain is no doubt keeping in contact. 

Keeping her in his peripheral vision, he reaches down under the seat below him. His fingers skim across canvas, stitching, heavy straps: a parachute. 

He motions to Leo to check under his own seat. Leo slides a hand underneath the metal bench, runs it along to his left, then to his right. He shakes his head. 

Vincent sighs. He looks Leo hard in his eyes, needs him to understand, to believe in him just this one last time. 

Quietly, he slips the parachute out from its slot under the seat. He starts to slide him arms through the straps. Leo’s looking at him, his eyes widening. He starts to shake his head minutely, involuntarily. Their last attempt at this hadn’t exactly gone to plan.

Vincent buckles the chest strap into place. He exhales. 

“Can you trust me?” he asks.

Leo’s skin goes pallid. But he nods. 

Vincent grins.

The trip down is horrible, just like Leo knew it would be. He grips Vincent so tightly he swears he’s about to break all his fingers. The last thing he sees in the plane is Emily’s shocked face as they jumped, and then it’s all just blue, blue sky and Vincent’s hair ruffling in the wind as they hurtle towards the ground. He clings on for dear life, muscles frozen with the force of it, barely able to let go once they’re firmly back on the ground. 

Vincent shrugs out of the parachute’s straps, starts pulling in the thick fabric of the chute, folding it quickly. He’s got it packed down and shoved into a bush before Leo’s even regained his breath properly.

“What now?” Leo asks.

Vincent looks around, like he’s expecting to find the answer somewhere among the trees. 

“I guess we walk until we find a road,” he says.

Leo doesn’t like the idea of being lost in the middle of Mexico with no clue where they are. But the alternative is to stay where they landed and wait for the feds to show up. Emily would have given them the coordinates. They’ll be back and searching before long.

He’s still mad at Vincent. Furious, even. Trust isn’t something he builds easily—never has, and most likely never will again. But over the three hours they walk through the thick trees, he realises the truth of what’s happened. Vincent was gonna fuck him over, but he didn’t. He jumped. And now he’ll be in just as much shit if they get caught. While they push through the brush and follow the setting sun for direction, his anger fades into something softer, like an old sweater folded up at the back of a closet, left to retrieve in another season.

He hates to think of what Vincent is throwing away for him, for some crazy idea of friendship and misplaced loyalty and who the fuck knows what else. Vincent has a life to go back to, a baby daughter to raise. And he’s throwing it away for this: sunburn, thirst, and a trek through the jungle alongside a goddamn criminal? 

The road they find is a single lane of cracked blacktop, dust-covered and silent. They follow it for another few hours, heading south-east. The adrenalin has long-since worn off, and he’s thirsty. Tired. Hungry. The sun has started to sink, thank god, so the worst of the heat has passed. 

Headlights cut through the gloom ahead. Without a second thought, Leo sticks out his thumb. 

The car slows, and the driver’s window winds down. A short man with dark hair peers cautiously out at them. 

“ _Hola_ ,” says Leo, pronouncing the ‘h’. 

“ _Buenas tardes_ ,” says the driver, suspicion tinting his voice. “ _A dónde van ustedes?_ ”

Leo doesn’t speak fucking Spanish. 

Apparently Vincent does.

“ _Vamos a donde va usted, señor_ ,” he says. 

The driver looks at them appraisingly. He seems to make a decision, because he nods, motioning to them to get in the car. The leather of the bench seat in the back is smooth and cool. Without meaning to, Leo closes his eyes as the car sets off, and drifts to sleep.

He doesn’t recognise the town where the driver drops them off, but that’s hardly surprising. He’s never been south of the border before, and this is all new to him. 

They hitchhike for days, walking long, dusty roads, sleeping in bus stops or doorways or beneath low-lying bushes when the moon rises high enough and they just can’t keep going. His feet hurt, blisters breaking out, popping, and building again on the balls of his feet and on his heels. 

He picks up enough of Vincent’s passable Spanish to order a beer, ask where the head is when he needs to take a piss and is in too polite company to find a nearby tree. He’s learned how to say _excuse me_ and _yes, please_ , but not how to say _I’m sorry_. 

He watches the steady set of Vincent’s shoulders, straight-backed and resolute as he looks over a map and leads them further south. He sees in the lines of his eyes, in the certainty in his jaw, that every step he takes with Leo is a decision to walk away from something else. Someone he left behind. 

Leo feels guilty. But he also feels something thrill within him, when he thinks of the two of them making this next step together, back to back, shoulder to shoulder. That Vincent isn’t letting him go. 

He can send for Linda and Alex later, when they’ve found somewhere safe. For now he feels safe, content almost, heading out and steadily forward with Vincent at his side.

Vincent’s not sure why Puerto Lobos seems like a good place to stop. But when the chicken truck they’d been riding in stops for the Saturday market, and they hop out of the truck bed and thank the driver profusely for the lift. 

They stretch their legs, walking through the market, stopping to buy hot, grilled corn and a bottle of cola each. He’d had cash on him when they’d made the jump—not a lot, and just US dollars, no pesos. But he’d managed to trade some of his dollars a few days back when they’d passed through a larger town, and they have enough to get by for a while. 

Puerto Lobos is not a larger town. It would barely qualify as a village. Once they step outside the noise of the market, he hears the faint sound of the sea.

“Come on,” he says to Leo.

“Where are we going?” Leo’s holding the cool, glass bottle to his sweaty forehead, trying to get some relief from the sun’s heat.

“I think I can hear the ocean,” he says. 

He follows his ears—Leo bitching half-heartedly behind him about how he just wants to sit and stop for a god damn minute, is that too much to ask?—and after about ten minutes the glory of the ocean spreads out before them. A blue expanse, the sun dazzling on its surface, the gentle waves sounding rhythmically below them, down the cliffs. The Atlantic, he guesses, if his map is correct. 

“Wow,” says Leo. “It’s beautiful.”

Vincent nods. “It sure is.”

They follow the cliffs for a while, maybe fifteen minutes or so, until they come across the shack. Its windows are dirty, one of them broken, and the roof has rusted. The porch steps creak as Vincent climbs them uneasily. The front door is hanging off its hinges, revealing the dark, empty interior of the house.  
He hears Leo climb the stairs behind him. 

“What is this place?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” says Vincent. “But I have an idea.”

Back in the village, he asks—as best as he can—about the house by the cliff. 

“ _Está embrujada_ ,” says the man behind the bar at the small cantina. 

Vincent looks confused. He doesn’t know what that means.

“ _Fantasmas_ ,” says the man. “ _Está maldita. Ahora está abandonada._ ”

Leo looks at him. “What’d he say?”

Vincent grins back. “That it’s haunted.”

The house is decidedly not haunted, they discover, but it is long since abandoned. When they return to the house that afternoon and start to clean it out—having mimed using a broom in the local general store, learning another word to tuck away into their growing vocabulary—they find no ghosts. Just layers of dust and silence, settling thick around them. 

The furniture is passable, a bed and a rickety table, and an old sofa that collapses when Leo sits on it, much to Vincent’s amusement. The electricity is still hooked up, evidenced by the wires running drunkenly from the house back towards town. The stove in the tiny kitchen works, as do the lights. 

Vincent counts two bedrooms: one with the dusty double bed, and another that’s locked, or stuck shut. There’s a bathroom with water that runs clear eventually, after the sink taps spit out rust-coloured sludge for a while. He looks longingly at the shower head, rusted and stuck into cracking tiles. He wonders what it would feel like to be clean again.

He finds old sheets folded up and stored in a cupboard in the bedroom, although the door falls off the cupboard when he swings it open. They’re dust-covered but still white—they just need to be cleaned. He thinks of the rusty water in the taps, the crack in the bathroom sink. He thinks of the deep, wide ocean and the rush and push of salt water, clear and clean and new.

“Hey, Leo,” he calls. “I’m gonna go try and wash these sheets down at the sea.”

He thinks about sleeping in a bed, for the first time in weeks. It would be a revelation. 

Leo pops his head around the doorframe.

“Sounds good. I think I saw a trail heading down towards the cliffs. Maybe that’ll lead down to the water.” 

Vincent nods, gathers the sheets in his arms. 

“I’ll try and get that stuck door open,” says Leo. 

The trail does lead down to the water, but the pathway is poorly defined, grown over with long grass in some places, and he picks his way carefully down to the soft sand of the small beach. He shakes the sheets out, takes off his shoes, rolls his jeans up to his knees, and wades into the surf. The water is warm, cleansing. He wants to fall into it, let it rush over him, let it wash away the last few weeks. 

There’ll be time for that later.

He soaks the sheets in sea water, scrubbing at them with his hands, then wringing them out and hanging them over a low-dipping palm tree to dry. It feels so domestic, so normal, like a dream version of something he’d do at home. He refuses to let himself get lost in the domesticity of it, though. He can’t afford to let that out of the box into which he’s shoved it. 

Something’s been bubbling beneath his skin these last few weeks, something that grows to a roaring boil when Leo’s eyes catch his just so. It shouldn’t feel nice, it shouldn’t feel good, playing house with Leo when he’s been feeling like this. It won’t help. 

And Leo’s not exactly touchable right now. Or ever. Hell, he’s lucky Leo’s even speaking to him after he came clean. 

He sits by the side of the ocean, staring out at the distant waves, letting the sun burn off some of the tension in his shoulders. It doesn’t take long for the sheets to dry, and when they’re done they smell of sand and salt and sun. 

He thinks of his bed at home, which he’d walked away from months ago. Carol had made it clear she hadn’t wanted him back in her bed, or even across her threshold. 

But that was before Julie. God, his daughter had been so small, so helpless when he’d held her at the hospital. He feels something stutter under his ribs at the thought of her. His daughter. Would he see her again?

He heads back to the house, sees Leo slouched in the frame of the back door, leaning against it with one shoulder, feet bare. 

“You took your time,” Leo says with a grin. “The floor’s pretty clean now. And I’ve tried to make the kitchen manageable.”

They haven’t talked about how long they’ll be staying—a week at most, he imagines, squatting in this tumble-down shack, while they put their heads together and plan their next move. 

The prospect of a home, however meagre and temporary, has relaxed something in Leo’s face. Vincent imagines arriving to this sight every day for the rest of his life. He imagines stopping at the door, leaning close and pressing his mouth to Leo’s, softly, in greeting. He shouldn’t want it. The thought of it shouldn’t make his mouth dry, his palms sweat, his stomach swoop as guilt and something more pleasant dance in his guts. They’re on the run. They’ve found a safe harbor for now, but it’s not a life. It can’t be his life. They have things—people—back in California waiting for them. 

So he doesn’t stop at the door, doesn’t twist the hem of Leo’s shirt between his fingers as he backs him against the wall, doesn’t slide a hand up his shirt to feel the warm, taut muscles of his back flex against his palm. 

Instead, he stops two feet away, holding the sheets in front of him like a shield, like an offering.

“Oh, and I got that other room open,” Leo says. “Turns out we’ve got a problem.” 

The problem is that there’s only one bed. 

The second room, Leo discovers one bruised shoulder later, is empty. Nothing but cobwebs and more dust, he notices with a sneeze. 

The fact that there’s only one bed shouldn’t bother him. It’s been so fucking long since he’s had a comfortable mattress underneath him, he’d sleep next to a hungry lion and still get his forty winks. He’s slept next to Vincent enough to know that his snores are nowhere near loud enough to be a problem. 

Still, they stand in the doorway, staring at the bed.

“I’ll sleep on the floor,” says Vincent. 

“Don’t be stupid, _I’ll_ sleep on the floor,” says Leo. 

Vincent seems to hesitate, looking from the bed to Leo and then back down to the hardwood floorboards. 

“We’ll take turns,” he says. 

“Okay. You get first shift. After all, you just washed the sheets.”

Vincent nods. 

“But I get first go at that shower,” Leo says. He raises his arm and makes an exaggerated sniff at his armpit. “Jeez, I fucking reek.”

“Yeah, you do,” says Vincent. “I don’t know how I stand it.”

He grins, flips Vincent the bird, and heads to the bathroom. The wooden door has swollen and doesn’t shut properly, so he leaves it slightly ajar, hoping that it won’t creak open while he’s in there.

The water in the shower, when he finally wrenches the rusted tap open, is disgusting. It’s rust-brown and tepid, dribbling out of the fixture at first, before spluttering red all over his bare chest. He holds back a yelp, wants to shut the tap off, but lets the water do its thing. Eventually it runs close enough to clear that he can get under the spray. 

Even getting moderately clean does wonders. He can feel the tension start to flow out of him with the water, sluicing off his shoulders and back, and running down into the drain. By the time he’s out of the water and drying himself off with his dirty shirt, he almost feels normal again. His gauge for normality must be way off.

He strolls out into the kitchen, hair still wet, his soaked shirt balled up in one fist. 

Vincent’s opening the cupboards in the kitchen, sweeping old, half-eaten containers of food into a pile, sorting canned goods into another. His eyes seem to catch on Leo’s bare chest before they flick up to his face. 

“Any good?” Vincent asks. 

“Better than nothing,” Leo says, and his throat feels dry. “I’m gonna go hang this up outside.” He gestures with the wet shirt, and heads out the back door. 

Over the next couple of days, they slowly make the house more liveable. They chase the spiders out of most of the corners, clean the bathtub until it’s relatively mold-free. The toilet is a whole other problem, but Leo’s pretty good with his hands and knows enough rudimentary plumbing to jury-rig the float arm so the cistern refills. He can work on something more permanent when they’ve scoped out the hardware in town a bit more thoroughly.

They don’t discuss their next steps. 

They spend a couple of evenings at the small bar in the village. People are interested in them, want to know what they’re doing in such a small backwater on the Mexican coast, he’s sure. But his Spanish skills are virtually non-existent, and he and the townspeople only have so much patience for hand signals and crude mimes. Vincent can keep up a little better, but he usually stops when he sees Leo’s discomfort. He feels bad, but he hates being cut out of the conversation. Vincent’s his only lifeline here—without him, he’d be dead in the water. 

Not literally, though. The water down at the beach is amazing. He’d never had much time for beach trips and leisurely swimming back home. 

One afternoon, he and Vincent grab cold beers from the general store and head down to the cliffs, rock-hopping until they reach the small beach. They sit on the sand with bare feet, and drink their beers and talk shit until the sun sinks lower on the horizon. 

“What’s the water like, do you reckon?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” says Vincent. “I went in up to my knees when we first got here. But not since.” 

Leo sits up from where he’s lolling against the sand. 

“I’m gonna find out.”

He strips off his shirt and jeans, leaving them hastily folded on a rock behind him. He leaves his briefs on, figuring they could do with a rinse—they really need to sort out their laundry situation. 

The late afternoon sun is warm on his chest as he walks towards the water. When he reaches it, it’s warm on his toes. He strides in up to his knees, then deeper, feeling the small waves tickle at the inside of his thighs. 

He turns around. Vincent’s staring at him from the shore, still sitting with a beer in his hand. 

“You coming in?” he calls.

Vincent shakes his head. 

“Pussy,” Leo says, grinning, before he dives under the waves. 

Eventually it becomes clear that they’re going to need more money. Vincent’s good with his hands, and Leo’s even better, so with a liberal application of poor Spanish Vincent finds them a few days’ work helping on a construction team build an extension on the town’s small church. 

The first shift is harder than Vincent expected, due largely to the language barrier. But at the end of the second day they’ve been paid, and they’ve added more words to their vocabulary, like _martillo_ , _serrucho_ , and _déjalo!_ , which they’ve inferred means they need to stop what they’re doing. _Gringo_ they already knew. 

They buy beer with their first paycheck, and Vincent snags a bottle of rum. They make rice and beans, which they eat off the mismatched plates they’d found in the kitchen cupboards. 

They still don’t have furniture beyond the bed and the broken sofa, so they sit with their backs against the wall in the kitchen, elbows brushing. The booze goes to Vincent’ face, bringing a hot pink flush out across his cheeks. 

When the beer is finished, Leo gets up and grabs the rum and two small, chipped glasses. He sits heavily back down on the floor, closer this time. So close Vincent can feel their thighs touch, just a little bit, until something makes him move imperceptibly closer, bringing them into firmer contact. 

He could say that he’s drunk. He could slur his words more than he needs to and fake it, so that he could brush it away if it goes to shit. But Leo’s thigh is pressing back into his, and the sheen of sweat on his neck is enthralling, and he doesn’t tell Vincent to stop staring when he watches Leo’s throat bob with each swallow of liquor. 

“This is the life, man,” Leo says.

Victor gestures around at the mold-stained ceiling, the bare floors, the chipped cabinetry. 

“This?”

“Well. Maybe not exactly this,” Leo shrugs. “But something like it. The beach, the beer. I miss Alex and Linda every day, but, man…I’m free. I’m not back rotting in a cell for the rest of my life. And it’s thanks to you.”

Vincent holds still, not sure how to react. He had no plan when he strapped on that parachute back in the plane. He doesn’t deserve thanks. They wouldn’t even be in this situation in the first place if he hadn’t been a liar, if he hadn’t used Leo.

“I’m serious, man,” Leo says. “Thanks.” 

He clinks his glass against Vincent’s.

“You have to stop thanking me,” Vincent says. 

“I’d be dead if it wasn’t for you,” he says. “So would my family. Harvey would have gone after them just to get to me. But they’re safe now.” 

Leo’s eyes are a deep, rich brown when he looks into them. The gratitude, the affection is real, reflected there for him to see. 

Thinking about Leo’s family makes him want to squirm. 

Leo pours another couple of fingers of rum into his glass. 

“And what the hell have I given you, Vincent? Huh?” He laughs bitterly, colour rising in his cheeks. “You’re stuck down here in the middle of fucking nowhere, playing house with a criminal in a goddamn haunted Mexican beach shack. You have a job, man. You have a life back home. What the hell are you even doing here with—”

Vincent kisses him just to shut him up. 

Leo’s lips are chapped and his breath tastes of the rum they’ve been drinking. Vincent is still, so still, afraid that if he moves it’ll all tumble away, collapse into the weeds. 

Leo kisses him back. It’s sloppy and hasty and they’re drunk. But it’s right. God damn, it feels right. 

It’s hurried and driven but almost chaste, just the fervent press of their lips together, pushed on by booze and desperation and something deeper that he won’t examine till morning. 

Leo’s hand comes up to rest against his jaw. He pulls his mouth away, tilting his head to rest their foreheads together. Leo laughs. He leans away from Vincent, leans back against the wall, picking up the rum bottle. He laughs again. “God fucking damn it,” he says. 

Leo passes the bottle to Vincent who takes a swig. He eyes Leo warily, like he’s a horse that’s about to bolt. 

But Leo doesn’t run. He extends his leg out, taps his bare foot against Vincent’s. His toes are hairy and his foot is warm. He leaves their legs pressed together like that for the rest of the night.

They don’t talk about it afterwards. Not later that night, not the next morning. But it’s not like it didn’t happen. 

Instead, they fix up the house. Each day they make small improvements to the house—they don’t talk about a plan, don’t discuss whether they’re settling down here or not. But they fix creaky doors and replace broken hinges. They patch up the broken window, buy a good kitchen knife and a new skillet.

Sometimes when they pass each other in the hallway, they stand a little closer to each other than they really need to, hands brushing shoulders, hips. Sometimes Vincent catches Leo staring at him, but he only catches him because he’d been about to do the same. 

Leo’s skin tans with the sun. Vincent learns to make proper chilaquiles for breakfast, with eggs from a couple of hens he doesn’t really remember them getting. They keep to themselves, mostly, but go into the village occasionally to get food and booze and to work. They pick avocados and make guacamole with too much lime juice. Vincent’s shoulders break out in freckles from spending so much time outside, and Leo makes fun of him, endlessly, gently. 

They don’t kiss again till almost a month later, and this time they’re sober.

Vincent’s spent the afternoon painting the kitchen and the small living area, while Leo’s been helping out with some carpentry in town. Each stroke of his paintbrush over the wood-panelled walls is another indelible mark on the place, another reminder that what they have here isn’t theirs, however much he’d like it to be.

Leo’s footsteps are loud up the front porch steps when he comes home. 

“I’ve got mangoes,” Leo says as he comes in the front door, dropping the fruits on the kitchen bench. 

Vincent eyes the cracked formica the fruit lands on, mentally adding it to the list of things he can fix around the house. Another distraction from the fact that they still don’t really know what they’re doing here. 

“And,” Leo continues, leaning back out the door to reach something he left on the porch. “Ta-da!”

The fishing rods he holds forward look like they’ve seen better days. They’re barely more than flimsy reels screwed onto poorly finished timber poles. But Leo’s smiling wide, excited. It’s contagious. 

“You’re getting dinner, then?” Vincent asks, grinning.

“No,” says Leo. “We are.” 

“Uh-huh.” 

Leo props the rods in the corner of the room, near the back doors that open onto a barely obscured view of the ocean. 

“Later, though,” he continues. “The guy said we should go at night, the fishing’s better.” 

“You understood that?”

“Well, I pieced it together.” 

Vincent stares at Leo, feeling something warm blooming in his chest. 

Leo looks over at him from where he’s fiddling with the fishing line on the rod, maybe attempting to check the knots on the hooks. 

“Hey, Vincent, you got a little…” He gestures to his cheek. 

Vincent rubs his hand over his face. He notices the white splattering his knuckles.

“Paint?”

Leo steps closer to him, raises his hand, rests his fingertips lightly on Vincent’s cheek. His eyes are appraising, clear.

“Yeah,” he says, his voice quiet. 

Vincent tries to hold perfectly still, to not push into the touch of Leo’s hand. 

Leo runs his thumb over Vincent’s cheekbone, stopping to rest near the corner of his eye. It’s such a small touch, the pad of his thumb calloused and dry. But the air around them feels heavy, like Vincent’s suddenly sucking down steam.

Leo clears his throat, drops his hand. 

“I’m gonna go take a shower,” he says. 

Vincent doesn’t say anything. He listens to the sound of the water running through the flimsy wall, and grabs a knife to slice up the mangoes instead. 

They eat the fruit together on the back stoop, Leo’s hair and ears still wet from the shower. The sun sinks over the ocean as they watch. 

Later, when it’s dark, they head down to the beach, fishing rods in hand. The moon is bright, so Vincent leaves the lantern behind. He follows the apparition of Leo’s white shirt ahead of him as they pick their way through knee-high clumps of grass on the poorly defined trail to the water. 

They bait their hooks with small shrimp and cast out into the surf. 

They’ve barely been there twenty minutes before Vincent’s fiddling with the reel, pulling the line in and recasting a couple of times.

Leo laughs at him as he sticks the end of the rod into the sand and sits down.

“See, you’ve got no patience,” he says. 

“I’m plenty patient,” Vincent says.

Leo snorts. “Not fucking likely.” 

“Just you wait,” says Vincent. “I know how to bide my time.”

He looks over at Leo sitting next to him on the sand. His eyes are dark, but the moon is bright. It’s almost full, casting its light in a silvery glow over the water, and the sand, and the white of Leo’s teeth as his lips part and he leans closer, closer. 

Vincent holds the line, waits for Leo to come to him. 

He sighs when their mouths connect, Leo trembling almost imperceptibly against him. 

“Is this okay?” he asks against Leo’s lips.

“Yeah,” Leo answers in barely a whisper, and leans in again. 

It’s different to the last time they kissed. That time they’d been drunk, and it’d been over before it barely began. He almost could have convinced himself that it hadn’t happened, if it weren’t for the constant tension singing between them since that night.

Vincent falls back onto his side, pulling Leo down with him. The sand moves like silk beneath his shoulder, cool and dry. Leo’s mouth is warm and damp, his tongue slick and cautious at first, but them more demanding as Vincent tips his head to the side and opens to him.

They kiss and kiss against the sand, the gentle surf a tender roar behind them. 

Vincent’s threads his fingers through Leo’s hair, pulling him closer. Leo groans into his mouth, palms at his hip, slots a knee between his thighs. The urge to grind against Leo is almost overwhelming, but he keeps his hips back even as he feels himself start to get hard—he doesn’t know where the line is, how much Leo will let him have, and he doesn’t want to cause this to end. 

Leo’s mouth tastes like beer, and like the mangoes he’d brought back from the market that afternoon. Vincent lets Leo push him onto his back, to lean over him in the sand and press their chests together, their hearts drumming a hard staccato against each other through layers of fabric and skin and bones. 

Leo breaks away, his lips swollen and his eyes glittering in the dark.

“What the hell are we doing?” he murmurs, reaching up and running his thumb over Vincent’s lower lip. 

A zip of line and a sudden splash heralds something taking the bait on one of their rods. Leo’s up and after it before Vincent can stop him. He hears wet splashes as from Leo’s feet as he runs after the rod in the water. 

“Shit!” Leo calls out, as the rod presumably disappears.

Vincent rubs a hand over his face, feels the slight burn that Leo’s stubble had left on his chin. 

_Shit indeed_ , he thinks.

They start to build a rapport with the people of Puerto Lobos. They make friends with the people they do construction for, the vendors at the market, the regulars at the bar. They’re no longer referred to as _los gringos_ , but _Vicente y León_. At least to their faces.

They’re at the market one Saturday, looking at the big shrimp the fishmonger’s selling, picking out a fresh snapper to take home and cook. 

“ _Parecen buenos_ ,” Vincent says to the fishmonger with a smile when he hands over the cash, gesturing to the fish. 

“ _Si, claro_ ,” the woman says, grinning back. “ _Solo lo mejor para ti, el guapo._ ”

The woman’s daughter turns to her mother with flushed cheeks.

“ _Mamá, no lo llames así cuando pueda oírte_!”

The old woman shrugs at her daughter. 

" _El guapo sabe que es el guapo_.”

Vincent looks at the younger woman, who blushes and looks away. 

He gestures at himself. 

“ _El guapo? Yo?_ ” 

The old woman laughs, reaches out and pinches his cheek. 

“ _Mira, te dije. El guapo entiende_.” 

Vincent’s picking up the language quickly, quicker than Leo. Quick enough to understand what _guapo_ means, at least. 

He considers it for a second.

“ _Y mi amigo? Que es su nombre?_ ”

The old woman looks at Leo, grins. 

“Mamá, no…” her daughter tries.

“ _Este hombre también es guapo, pero no como tú. El le llamamos ‘el nariz’._ ”

He knows enough to understand that, too. He looks at Leo, who’s staring back at him questioningly. He bites back a grin. 

“What?” Leo asks.

“Nothing.”

“No, what is it?” Leo looks agitated—Vincent knows he hates no being able to communicate as well as he’d like.

“Nothing, they’ve just given me a nickname.”

“Oh yeah? What is it?”

Vincent shrugs, self-effacing. “The handsome guy,” he says. 

Leo looks him up and down, nodding. “Sure. What about me, do I have a name?” 

Vincent tries his hardest not to laugh. 

“Nope,” he says. He places a hand on Leo’s shoulder, steers him back towards the bustle and sway of the market. “I don’t think so.”

Time passes. It’s been four months, by Leo’s count. The seasons don’t really seem to change here, this close to the equator. 

They don’t talk any more about moving on, the next step, the next stage of the plan. Leo leaves it be. Something stops him from breaking the peace, from asking where they’re going next. Maybe the coastal air, the warmth of the sun, the steady, constant presence of Vincent beside him. He doesn’t want to ask.

They have given up the pretence of taking turns sleeping on the floor. Instead they now share the bed, each man initially taking care not to encroach on the side of the other, but lately waking up with feet entangled and arms slung loosely over each other’s waists. It should scare him, but it doesn’t. 

They haven’t done more than that, despite the morning wood he sometimes embarrassingly wakes with, despite the itch he gets to drop to his knees and unbuckle Vincent’s belt when he looks at him just so in the afternoon light. He controls himself, though. They haven’t touched each other anywhere they can’t take back. 

Sometimes they find themselves standing too close to one another in doorways, and they’re drawn together, some unstoppable force causing Leo or Vincent or both of them to lean in, just so, their kisses light and lingering. They kiss in the kitchen, Leo bumping his head on the light fixture hanging in the middle of the small room. Sometimes he catches Vincent looking at him with something soft and inscrutable in his eyes, and it makes his heart beat faster. 

They don’t talk about it, but it happens enough that he expects it now, that it seems right to tip forward just so to capture Vincent’s mouth with his own, to grab his hand as he passes him by the bathroom door, to lay a palm on his shoulder in the kitchen while he cooks. They touch each other with an easiness that grows deeper roots with each passing day.

It doesn’t feel permanent, though—he doesn’t feel quite like he can have this. The shape of Vincent’s mouth against his is becoming more familiar each week, but it still feels like something stolen and wrong, something half-taken and half-misunderstood, wrong-footed and unsure. 

They can’t just play house forever. 

Vincent has Julie back in California. Whatever peace he’s finding is temporary, and he knows it. Vincent needs to be with his daughter. 

And he needs to talk to Linda. He can feel a pull here, something sharp and irrepressible just behind his navel, tugging him towards Vincent, towards whatever it is they’re tentatively building. But he owes it to his wife, to talk to her, to see what she wants and where she stands. 

He hasn’t contacted her yet—it’s not safe, he’s told himself. They could be tapping her phone. They could be using her to find him. But he can’t keep away from her forever, it’s unfair—for both of them.

He finds a phone in the bar in town, slapping down the last of their US dollars to cover the cost—he has no idea what the rates are for international calls, but he hopes it’s enough. 

He dials the number with shaking hands. It rings for a long time before Linda answers. 

“Hello?”

Just hearing her voice makes something crumble inside him.

“It’s me,” he says.

“Leo? Jesus, is—Leo?!”

She hasn’t expected this. She sounds shocked, unsure if she even believes it’s him on the other end of the line.

“Where are you?”

“Mexico,” he says. “We got away, we’ve been on the run.”

“We?” she asks.

“Yeah, me and Vincent. I was hoping you and Alex could come down and be here with me. You know, once it’s safe.” 

Even as the words are leaving his mouth, he can still feel Vincent’s warm hand resting against the small of his back this morning in their bed, and something painful and guilty writhes within him. He thinks of their bed—because what else could he think of it as?—and the warmth of Vincent’s body next to his, a cool sea breeze ruffling the curtains on the window overlooking the ocean. He thinks of the way Vincent smiles at him over the small electric stove as he attempts to make tamales, his broad and steady shoulders filling the kitchen, his laughter bouncing off the walls and settling somewhere deep in the centre of Leo’s chest. 

“I can’t,” says Linda. 

He’s surprised. “What? Why not?” 

“It’s not fair to Alex,” she says. “He has a life here. We both do.”

He knows, then. He just does. “You’ve met someone else,” he says, and it’s not a question.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and he hears it in her voice: the sorrow, the regret, the apology. “We met when you were inside. I wanted to tell you, but I couldn’t, and then it was too late…I thought you were dead. They told me you were dead, that the plane went down, that you hadn’t survived.” 

Her breath is shaking. He can picture her there, pressing the back of her hand into her mouth, trying to be strong, always, for him. 

“It’s okay,” he says. It’s the only thing he can say.

He thinks of Vincent back in their house, sanding back the old dining table and chairs they’d salvaged from the side of the street. Making something from nothing, creating a place for them to sit and share meals, like they’re home. Like what they’re creating here is more than a pit-stop, more than a rest on the road to who the fuck knows where. 

“Are you in love?” he asks, and he does and doesn’t want to know the answer.

“Are you?” she counters, her voice so far away.

He doesn’t know how to respond.

“Should I stay dead?” he asks, and his voice wavers a little. 

Linda breathes down the phone. “Alex will always love you,” she says, after a moment. 

“I love you both so much,” he says. 

She hangs up. 

Vincent has almost finished with the table by the time Leo comes back. 

“I guess I’m dead,” Leo says when he comes in.

Vincent looks at him where he stands in the doorway, eyes cast down, something resolute in his stance.

“What?” he asks, puzzled.

“I just talked to Linda,” Leo says.

Linda. _Oh, fuck, if she knows where we are, if she tells the feds…_ Something flighty rises in his throat, makes his heart beat faster. He doesn’t want this to end. He doesn’t want to run again.

“Did you tell her where you are?” he asks, and he can’t keep the accusation out of his voice.

“No!” Leo denies.

“We’ll be so fucked if the feds find us, you know that.” 

“Of course I know that!” 

“Why did you call her?” he asks. But Leo _should_ call his wife. Leo should find a way back to Linda, to normality and home and safety and everything that Vincent isn’t. 

“Because I can’t keep doing this,” Leo says with urgency, with frustration.

“Doing what?”

Leo gestures between them. 

“I can’t keep living in between two lives like this,” he says. 

Vincent nods. “So you made a choice,” he says. It’s not a question. 

He’s afraid, afraid that Leo is about to leave, to go home, to give up what fragile peace they’ve built here. 

“Yeah, I’ve made a choice,” Leo says, suddenly standing closer. “Or Linda did. Or we both did, I don’t know. They’re better off without me.” 

His fingers grab the hem of Vincent’s shirt, his thumb running along the seam. It’s getting threadbare; he’ll need to buy a new one soon. 

“But you’ve got family back home,” he continues. “You’ve got a daughter you need to be there for.”

Vincent shakes his head. The darkness in Carol’s eyes when she’d told him to get out of her room at the hospital. The unyielding, days-long fight they’d had before he’d gone undercover. 

“I can’t go back,” he says. “My marriage was over before you and I even met.” 

“And your daughter?”

“It hurts,” Vincent says, and it does, it hurts even to say it. 

Leo nods. 

“I know.” 

Vincent takes a step closer to him, reaches up to cup Leo’s elbow with his hand. His other hand extends out, shaking, to rest against Leo’s chest. 

Leo looks down. “I keep waiting for you to leave,” he says. 

“I won’t,” Vincent says, simply. 

Leo’s heart is beating hard under his palm. He searches Leo’s face, and he sees the want and the fear fighting it out in his eyes. Leo’s tongue darts out to wet his lips. 

“Are we doing this?” Leo asks, his voice low.

Vincent slides his hand up Leo’s chest, skimming his fingers over stubble and the softness of his throat beneath it, before coming to rest against Leo’s jaw. He pulls Leo’s face to his, sealing his lips with his own in answer. Leo lets out a noise, soft and low in the back of his throat, before practically yanking Vincent to him, winding a strong arm around the back of Vincent’s neck and tugging him closer. His mouth opens beneath Vincent’s, wet and warm and everything, everything. 

“God damn it, I want you,” Leo murmurs between kisses, sliding his other hand down into the back pocket of Vincent’s jeans. “Fuck, Vincent, I want you.”

Vincent kisses him harder, backs him up against the kitchen counter, sending their only frying pan skidding and clattering to the floor. He slides one hand up the front of Leo’s shirt, feeling goosebumps skitter across the skin in his wake. Leo’s skin is flushed warm, his chest heaving with each breath. 

“I’ve wanted you,” he says, dropping his mouth to lay wet, open kisses across Leo’s neck. “I’ve wanted you for so fucking long.” 

Leo moans, tips his head back.

It doesn’t take Vincent long to pull Leo’s shirt over his head, to unbuckle his jeans and cup his hardening sex in his hand, squeezing the curve of his cock through the fabric of his briefs. 

“Jesus,” Leo breathes, and his nose whistles a little as he inhales sharply. He digs his hand deeper into Vincent’s back pocket, crushing their hips together. His arm tightens around the back of Vincent’s neck, pulling their mouths together again. 

It’s so different this time. This time they touch each other with intent, with meaning and purpose, with sure hands and a desire that ignites the scant air left between them. 

When Vincent leans Leo back over the kitchen counter, he tries to steady himself against the formica but knocks a glass to shatter on the ground. Leo says, hurried and harsh against Vincent’s lips: “Bed, bed.” 

Vincent doesn’t disagree.

In the cool of their bedroom, he strips Leo down to his skin, pushing him back against the mattress. Leo scoots up the sheets, pats the space next to him. 

“Get your stupid ass over here,” he says. 

Vincent laughs, lifts his shirt off and tosses it onto the ground, his jeans and underwear pooling next to them. Naked, he crawls over Leo’s body, kissing him everywhere, everywhere. They’re both so hard, and his mouth waters slightly as he looks down at Leo’s cock, standing erect in a nest of dark pubic hair.

He shuffles down the bed, wraps his fingers around Leo’s dick, and starts to lower his head.

“Wait, wait,” Leo says. 

Vincent pulls back, looks up at him.

“I’ve never done this before,” he says, and he looks suddenly nervous. 

“You’ve never been blown before?” Vincent asks.

Leo kicks at his knee. 

“No, you asshole. I’ve never done this with…you know…”

“With a man?”

Leo nods.

“We don’t have to,” Vincent says, leaning back.

“Oh god, don’t you stop now, you bastard!” Leo says, letting out a shaky laugh. 

“In my experience, it’s not really all that different,” Vincent says. 

“Okay, okay,” says Leo. “Shut up and suck my dick, then.”

He does. He swallows Leo down to the root, holding his hips down even as Leo’s trying to thrust up into the warmth of his mouth.

“Jesus Christ,” Leo’s moaning, his feet searching for purchase on the mattress. His hands reach over his head, forming fist in the pillow under his head. “Jesus Christ, _fuck_.”

Vincent laves his tongue over Leo’s cock, over the head, the shaft. He sucks him down deep, slow. He feels him grow impossibly harder in his mouth as Leo’s breathing grows faster, his moans sharper.

He pulls away with a lingering curl of his tongue. 

Leo sits up. “What did you stop for?”

Vincent grins. “Because there’s more, and I don’t want you to come yet.” 

He leaves the bed, kisses Leo’s hip as he goes. He snags the bottle of olive oil from the kitchen and saunters back into the bedroom. 

“Is that Mexican for lube?” Leo asks, sitting up on his elbows. 

“Shut up,” Vincent laughs. “It’ll do.”

He straddles Leo’s thighs, pours a dash of oil into his palm.

“Please, god, tell me you’re not going to cook with that tomorrow,” Leo says.

Vincent rolls his eyes as he places the bottle back on the ground. “I didn’t put my goddamn dick in there!” 

Leo squints at him. “…Is that even a thing?”

Vincent gives a groan of mock exasperation. “Oh my god, do you ever stop talking?” 

Leo sits up, grabs Vincent by the back of the neck, and pulls him into a short, deep kiss. 

“Make me,” he says, belligerent and hot as all hell.

Vincent growls, pushes him back against the sheets. He leans over Leo, mouthing down to his neck, his shoulder, biting gently into the give of the flesh, the tightness of the muscle. 

“If you want,” he says, and wraps his broad hand around both their cocks, slowly jacking them together in the slick heat of his hand. 

Leo is beautiful beneath him, a deep flush running from his throat down to his navel. He wraps an arm around Vincent’s shoulder, fingers digging in, leaving marks against his skin. 

Vincent wants to kiss him again, wants to fit their mouths together in perfect wet heat, but he also doesn’t want to stifle the sounds falling from Leo’s mouth: the soft curses and moans slipping out from between his clenched teeth as Vincent works their cocks faster. He settles for kissing Leo’s neck, trailing his lips and teeth up to nip at his earlobe, sliding his nose across Leo’s cheek until their foreheads are pressed together. 

Leo’s hips buck up against his hand, and his eyes open wide. His face is so close that it looks like just one eye, one big brown eye staring up at him, pupil blown. 

“Vince, oh Jesus, fuck, Vince,” he groans, his hips stuttering against Vincent’s own.

“Are you gonna come?” Vincent asks, giddy with it, with the pleasure twisting itself around his spine, threatening to burst out of him.

“Soon, soon,” Leo pants, and he tilts his head, captures Vincent’s mouth with his own, his tongue wild and unfettered. Vincent’s thumb catches at the head of his cock and he moans, and Vincent feels it more than hears it as it reverberates from his mouth down to his toes. 

He kisses Leo and kisses him, his mouth trying to keep up as his hips start to thrust, fucking into his own hand, feeling his cock sliding hot and hard against Leo’s. He feels Leo’s mouth slip away, hears it like a clarion bell when Leo comes, like the pleasure’s being stripped from his very bones. He feels the hot splash of semen against his hand, his stomach, and it’s enough. He closes his eyes and ducks his head into the crook of Leo’s shoulder as he follows, tumbling after him into release. 

Beneath him, he feels Leo start to laugh.

He lifts his head, looks down at Leo. “You okay there?” he asks.

“Yeah,” says Leo, still smiling, eyes mirthful. “Get off me, will you? You’re fucking heavy.” 

He rolls off Leo and onto his back on the bed next to him. His heart is still racing. 

“Geez,” says Leo, looking down and the come splashed over his stomach and crinkling his nose. “That made a fucking mess.” 

Vincent turns and reaches over the edge of the bed, swiping his shirt off the floor. He wipes it down Leo’s stomach and legs, then his own, then his hands. 

“Gross,” says Leo. 

“I’ll wash it tomorrow.” 

They’re quiet for a minute.

“Was that too much?” he asks, tentative. 

“Nope,” Leo says. 

“I don’t wanna—”

“You won’t. Here, lift your head up for a second.”

Vincent does, and feels Leo’s arm slide beneath him, feels the big, dry palm wrap around his shoulder and tug, pulling him closer. 

The kiss Leo drops on the side of his mouth is unguarded and sweet. 

“Fuck me, I’m tired,” Leo says through a yawn.

“I thought I just did,” says Vincent.

Leo pinches his shoulder, but he can hear the smile in his voice when he replies.

“Yeah, yeah.” 

Vincent basks in the easy warmth of Leo pressed next to him, He turns onto his side, resting his head on Leo’s shoulder. The earthiness of him rises from his armpit, right near his nose, but he doesn’t mind. 

Slowly he slides his arm over Leo’s waist, reaches in the dark for his hand, twines their fingers together. 

They sleep that way til morning.

Time passes. They make friends, as best they can, with the people of Puerto Lobos. They spend time at the bar, at the small restaurant in the village square—Leo even puts in an appearance at the small church a handful of times when he says he needs to get out of his head. 

The bar has good food and cold bottles of beer, and an old piano in the corner. When Vincent has had enough to drink, Leo can cajole him into playing something—not that it takes much convincing. Sometimes he plays blues, sometimes he plays songs he remembers from the radio, singing along in a gruff voice. He plays Cat Stevens, that one song that seemed to always be on high rotation the year before he got put away. When Vincent sings the line _‘Look at me: I am old, but I’m happy,’_ he looks at Leo and smiles, or winks. Leo rolls his eyes and pretends to hate it, but he doesn’t. 

The finish the house together, putting the last touches in place: a new, unspotted bathroom mirror; a lamp next to their bed; fresh countertops in the kitchen, which Leo pats fondly before hoisting himself to sit on top of it, pulling Vincent in by the shirtfront til he’s pressing close between his thighs. 

They let the first tendrils of fondness take root and bloom into something more—a living plant that looks an awful lot like love. They feed it, water it, urge it to grow with each kiss they share, each night they make love, and each corner of their hearts they open to one another.

They miss their children. They ache for those parts of themselves they’ll never have again. They understand this pain in each other, and do the best they can to salve it when it rears its head. 

They love each other, and they live. To the rest of the world, they stay dead.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for bearing with me while I got that off my chest! 
> 
> I love these idiots so much, I just needed them to be happy.


End file.
